Breaking barriers: new event in UK festival calendar

2Decks, who will be on stage at the Rock House Festival (photo by Paul Mansfield)A new festival opens this weekend, featuring some of the biggest names in the integrated music scene, uniting learning disabled and non-learning disabled musicians.

The inaugural event has been sparked by the successful monthly Rock House nights at music venue The Green Door Store.

For the last eight years, the accessible Rock House nights have attracted crowds of up to 100 and feature one non-learning disabled band, alongside up to five learning disabled bands.

Musician Tom Cook and promoter Richard Phoenix, who runs community interest company Constant Flux, launched the monthly band nights eight years as a showcase for the learning disabled musicians they worked with.

It’s hoped the new festival will become an annual fixture in the UK summer festival scene.